Week 3, Computer Controlled Cutting
This week's goal is to make a parametric modular consturction set that could be assembled in multiple ways. It would also be one of the first times I would be using a laser cutter so I was quite a bit excited for it!
The prompt was pretty dang vauge so there was quite a few ideas that I came up with ranging from castles to a gear set
While all these were fine and dandy, the idea that stuck out to me was the idea of a modular sword (I've always been a huge weapons nerd so this would be pretty fun)
The designing
As the design had to be consturctable in differnt ways, I thought having the sword being instad of one solid blade, a bunch of diffrent pieces that would slot together with connectors and the diffrent pieces would be diffrent shapes and sizes, think differnt blade tips and the like
I didnt end up making too many diffrent modules for the blade itself, but what I did make was a whole bunch of them (if I had more time or come back to this in the future, I would probably make a few more types
Above is a picture of blade's general design.
Part of the prompt was to make the design parametric, meaning that the dimentions/sizes are based on equasions. For exsample, in my project they width of one of the blade modules, BW2 is 1/4th the width of the main blade, BW1. So if I were to change the width of BW1, BW2 would change with it, same goes for the other way around.
The software that I use, Onshape calls these values "Varables" I have never really used these so this was quite an experence for me. In the past I mainly just used a whole bunch of constrants and relations to make my designs mostly scale-able (we don't talk about the 2021 scaling incident)
To the right, We can see the parameters that I set for the design. I tend to use a lot of shorthand for my variables (or just naming things in general) but for the varables that could be confusing, I wrote what they stand for in the "description" column in the table. There are a few but it can really be boiled down three main catagories, Variables relating to the Blade size, Variables relating to the slots, and varables relating to just miscellaneous things.
In Blade size, we have bw1, bw2, and bl. In Slots, we have SlotThickness, SlotDepth, and kerf. In misc, we have literally everything else not yet mentioned.
OK! With that out of the way, lets get building!
First off, I did some basic set up for Epilog, the laser cutter that I used to cut the blade.
Now sadly, I couldn't make this out of metal (and if I did I would need to redesign) because I don't believe our laser cutter can handle steel nor did we have the stock to do so, so that was out of the question. My other choices would be acrylic, cardboard, or wood. Acrylic would snap with pretty much any movement given how it’s built and cardboard would be too light, so I am left with wood. I am fine with that, wood is probably my favorite thing that i've personally laser cut so far.
I also made a little stand for it :)
